This blog exists to support liberatory collectivist activism that is anti-patriarchy, anti-colonialism, and anti-capitalism. It also seeks to center the experiences, theories, and agendas of radical and feminist women of color.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

One Piece of a White Patriarchal Puzzle: We are what we read

"One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, one ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them."

This prophetic utterance comes from J.R.R. Tolkien's masterpiece, The Lord of The Rings.

From this site, we have a list--many lists, of people's top five books. I don't know where these folks live. Only what they read. I will ask you to scan the lists and note: how many are books by men, by women, by whites, by people of color? How many are by white het men? Which "demographic" is most represented? Which demographic is the least represented. And "LOTR" is Lord of the Rings, written by a white het guy.

In my scan, the most, by far is U.S. and Euro white het men. The least is Indigenous women and other women of color. White women are far behind white men too. But men of color don't fair much better. And gay men?A few: James Baldwin, Evelyn Waugh, E.M. Forster. A very few white lesbian writers made one person's list. And there's the person who lists "The Bible" five times. Which bible? Oh, the one used by white het men to maintain white het male supremacy?? THAT bible? And wouldn't listing it once suffice? I guess not. Apparently Jesus wants to be mentioned five times in one list: NOT. Both Lolita and a work by de Sade is mentioned, and a few of the lists are reported as offensive and have been deleted. One can only wonder...So, here's the list. And I'm putting pieces of a puzzle together here, and other posts are other pieces, including the next post, especially. If you note something about this list, please offer a comment. And something beyond "Well of course most white people will mention white/English-speaking writers!" Because I suspect the lists of white het men show up in societies that aren't white, also. And that men outrank women, on just about every list everywhere. We can note that it appears to be women who lost only women writers. Why is that?

Heh. My top five (fiction and non-fiction) for now in no particular order:

1) If on a Winter's Night a Traveller... (Italo Calvino)
2) A River Runs Through It and other stories (Norman Maclean)
3) Dispatches (Michael Herr)
4) Persuasion (Jane Austen)
5) I Capture the Castle (Dodie Smith)

1. The Hardy Boys: The Shore Road Mystery
2. The Hardy Boys: The Clue of the Broken Blade
3. The Hardy Boys: The Flickering Torch Mystery
4. The Hardy Boys: The Sign of the Crooked Arrow
5. The Hardy Boys: The Mystery of the Chinese Junk

1. The Power of One and Tandia by Bryce Courtenay (Tandia is the sequal)
2. Any Human Heart by William Boyd
3. Chocky by John Wyndham
4. The L-Shaped Room trilogy by Lynn Reid Banks
5. Edward Trencom's Nose: A Novel of History, Dark Intrigue and by Giles Milton

"L'Etranger - Camus": there's this great line in it, after the incident on the beach when the guys says something along the lines of "it was like knocking 4 times on the door of unhappiness", but erm, more eloquently than that.

Discworld: They're so samey though Wang. The best was "Guards ! Guards!" and he could have really developed those charcters but every subsequent Watch novel was all about Vimes being drunk and depressed. And there were ones that you just couldn't get through like the Hogfather.

As for Tom Clancy, I agree he had some very interesting ideas, particularly the Palestine stuff (and Ryan's idea in an earlier book - Debt of Honour I think about how to reopen the crashed financial markets after they were hacked - I won't give the spoiler away).

The rest of it - a flat tax instead of progressive taxation, real people in the Senate (because there were no career pols available) etc - is just so beyond the realms of practicality though..

What are the rules here please, you are all making lists of fiction, does it have to be fiction?

My top 5 books are

To the Finland Station Edmund Wilson
The Classical World Robin Lane Fox
The Pursuit of Love / Love in a Cold Climate Nancy Mitford
The Screwtape Letters C.S. Lewis
Voyage to the End of the Room Tibor Fischer

My daily working life is Catch 22 esque - crikey that sounds twatish! - but all I mean is that it feels like they're always adding in more missions whenever I get near where I want to be... The only hilarious bit was when he marched around the square holding his gun upside down!

No Dickens on the list either - Great Expectations or better still Tale of Two Cities ... surely worth a shout

1) How to Succeed in Business Without a Penis by Karen Salmansohn
2)Women and from Venus, Men are from Hell by Amanda Newman
3)Babies and other hazards of Sex by Dave Barry
4) Outwitting Fish: An Angler's Guide to Proving That the Smarter Creature Is on the Dry End of the Line by Bill Adler
5)Are Women Human?: And Other International Dialogues by Catharine A. MacKinnon

a book every young person should read,in pursuit of getting an outrageous handle on what is possible, is MyLife & Loves, by Frank Harris [real life-affirming stuff, full of uber daring vitality and lies, but delicious lies! ---and it may all be true anyway....! who knows

and a book first published in 19sixties by ex-RAF chap called WMV Fowler, called Countryman’s Cooking ...it was republished a yr or two ago and Amazon had it